This latest work features characters chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this presents as a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. However it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
The writer was originally an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she now wants to try out different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
As a reader fond of polished prose of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
Being a reader who favors crafted language of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the unpolished style she has in common with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the central part. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the anger and fear that drives a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
